


Black Coffee

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Comment Fic 2017 [2]
Category: NCIS
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 18:30:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9197951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Any, any/any, black coffee."Jethro likes black coffee, and Tony.





	

Jethro likes his coffee black because coffee is about heat, sharpness, alertness, waking up his mind for work. It’s not about pleasure, or sweetness, or comfort. It’s to get the job done. So he cannot keep the disdain off his face when he takes a sip of what Tony has because Tony spilt Gibbs’s perfectly good black coffee, and what he tastes is - frappuccino. Or some other ridiculous Italian concoction designed to deliver coffee caffeine without even vaguely resembling coffee.  
  
Jethro dislikes ridiculous Italian concoctions. But he likes Tony.  
  
Tony’s smart, a little bit attention-seeking, kind of like a lonely puppy, and he tries so, so hard to be a man’s man, with his stylishness and good looks and incessant flirting with women, but Jethro’s onto his game. He’s seen that game played a different way - with Marines, overcompensating for their secrets with pumping iron and hawkeye shooting skills and vicious hand-to-hand.  
  
Jethro is irritated the first time he sees the probie being led toward him, with his carefully-gelled hair and stylish clothes, but when he shakes Tony’s hand, Tony’s hands are - rough. Have calluses, and not just the ones a person gets from regular handling of a firearm.   
  
What does Tony do in his spare time? Because all he seems to do is endlessly quote movies and make references to pop culture that suggest all he does is watch TV and listen to music.  
  
Tony is the same as everyone else - save one woman and one girl - the first time he comes into Jethro’s basement where Jethro is working on boat number two. “Have you ever heard of power tools?”  
  
But when Jethro gives him sandpaper and a sanding block, he sands smoothly, with the grain, neat, even strokes, and Jethro can see he’s counting under his breath. Not his first rodeo, then. And he doesn’t complain about getting dust on his jacket.  
  
Tony puts his smarts to good use, because a skilled investigator. Jethro isn’t even sure when Tony starts bringing coffee for the both of them. He is careful to never drop Jethro’s coffee anymore, and he is even more careful to not mistakenly hand Jethro the drink he ordered for himself.  
  
Tony passes his probationary period with flying colors, and then the team starts to grow. Kate. McGee. And the coffee stops. Jethro doesn’t realize it till he gets to his desk one day and he has no coffee and he doesn’t understand why and he hears Tony and Kate needling each other like a pair of squabbling siblings.  
  
Jethro doesn’t say anything, but he watches Tony, and he wonders.  
  
He wonders why it took him so long to notice just how much Tony watches him back.  
  
Kate and Tony settle into a comfortable pattern of sometimes flirting, sometimes squabbling like siblings, and as the scale tips more toward squabbling like siblings, Tony’s bringing Jethro coffee again. Jethro is puzzled when the coffee from Tony resumes, because he is used to buying it for himself, but a second cup of coffee is not unwelcome. He tests Tony for three weeks before he trusts that the bringing of the coffee is consistent, and they have reached some kind of balance that Jethro had not realized was lost.  
  
And then Kate is gone, and Jethro’s world is spun off its axis by Ari, and then -  
  
Jethro doesn’t remember. Not the people who say they know him or work for him or are friends with him.  
  
The kid, Tony, is easy on the eyes, but Jethro has long learned to look and not touch, not linger too long in his thoughts, because he has Shannon to go home to.  
  
Only Tony presses a cup of coffee into Jethro’s hands, and the scent hits him, and he remembers something else.  
  
Stepping in and curling a hand at the base of Tony’s neck and kissing him.  
  
Except - no.  
  
That’s not a memory.  
  
That’s a dream.  
  
Tony keeps bringing him coffee and very carefully doesn’t look him in the eye.

And Jethro - he runs. To Mexico. To a life that is so alien and distant that he isn’t caught between the fragments of his own memory and the dreams he never admitted he had. This is the life he never thought he’d have for himself, sand and sea and easy cervezas and doing things with his hands.

When Jethro finally goes back, he finds Tony at his desk, Tony who brings himself frappuccinos but bestows courtly favor for a day on anyone who brings him extra. Jethro’s desk is Tony’s desk now, and Jethro’s team is Tony’s team, but Jethro’s coffee is still his own.

Tony snaps his fingers, and the overeager Agent Lee ducks away, and halfway through Jethro’s conversation with Tony and Jenny, Agent Lee reappears with Jethro’s coffee, black, just how he likes it.

Tony gives up his desk and his place as team leader quickly enough when Jethro says he’s here to stay.

Agent Lee transfers to a different department, and here they are, McGee, Tony, Ziva, and Jethro, Abby and Ducky and the new kid, Palmer. Jethro goes back to work. He starts building a new boat.

Tony doesn’t bring him coffee.

Jethro figures out soon enough that Tony is seeing someone, a woman. He figures out that Tony has been doing undercover jobs for Jenny.

Jethro figures out, instants before anyone else, what Tony had done.

Tony had gone undercover, seeing a woman for Jenny, the daughter of La Grenouille.

And then La Grenouille goes missing and the woman leaves town and Tony starts bringing Jethro coffee again.

They are alone, the two of them, in Jethro’s basement, discussing a case while Jethro sharpens some of his chisels and Tony sands, and Jethro finally asks him, “What’s with you bringing me coffee all these years?”

Tony says, “I hear it’s common courtesy, to do nice things for people you work with, who you might occasionally like, since liking people is one of those human things we non-Marines learn to do.” He doesn’t look up from the piece of wood he’s sanding.

“Marines like other people.”

“Marines love other people,” Tony says. “They love each other, that whole brothers-in-arms thing I’ll never understand. And they protect the people they love, like Abby and Ducky and Ziva and Probie.”

Jethro notices the omission from the list. “You think I don’t love you?”

“I like you, Boss. So I bring you coffee.”

“Marines aren’t well-known for their love of word games and semantics, DiNozzo.”

Tony glances up. “You bring Caf-Pow for Abby. I bring coffee for you.” He sets down the sanding block and dusts off his shirt absently, rolls his sleeves back down, buttons the cuffs with deft fingers.

“I know what it takes to make Abby happy.”

“No one wants to start the day off with a grumpy boss, Boss.” Tony picks up his jacket and heads for the stairs. “I’ll get on those leads.”

“Tony.”

He pauses at the sound of his first name.

“Coffee is what I drink so I can get the job done. Leatherneck though I may be, when I’m looking to unwind, I prefer a nice red wine.”

“Duly noted, Boss.”

The next time Tony comes to Jethro’s basement after hours, he brings a bottle of red wine and two wineglasses with him.

Tony has good taste in wine.

Tony tastes good with wine on his lips.

Tony doesn’t stop bringing him black coffee.

Once in a while, Jethro will bring Tony a frappuccino.


End file.
